"This is what I've brought you," he said, still on one knee over the trunk. He turned and handed them each a little morocco case. A murmur of surprised thanks, a click of opening clasps, and before each girl's eyes gleamed a tiny watch, round which lay coiled a fine little chain.
"Oh, oh, oh!" Emmie dropped a pile of shirts on the floor and danced about. "My initials on the back in pink coral!"
"Mine in turquoise! Oh, how did you know blue was my color?" But Emmie had precipitated herself upon Ethan's bosom and was hugging him wildly.
He was laughing, and crying "Help! help!" And when Emmie desisted, "Help me to throw those clothes back."
They put everything away in wild disorder, except one small package, which he had pocketed.
"Let's go and show our watches to grandma," said Emmie; and they all went down to the long room.
Ethan had his hand on the door-knob.
"Oh, we always knock," said Emmie, not too excited even by a gold and coral watch but what she could supply so alarming an omission.
"Come in."
Ethan paused a moment on the threshold while his cousins rushed in. He was thinking how that particular "Come in," aided perhaps by the preliminary formality of a discreet knock (how could he have forgotten!); the unchanged aspect of the big room and its occupant in the queer red chair—how it all gave him back his childhood; gave him back, too, in some indefinable way, his old feeling of being "in the Presence." All the adulation of which he himself had been the object at home and abroad had not changed this. In Paris he was a personage; in the press of two continents he was a respectfully mentioned millionaire; in the select circles of half a dozen capitals he was courted and fawned upon as a great parti; but in the long room he was a vassal, if not still a child. It amused him to think that he humored the notion. Mrs. Gano had received the deputation smiling, and had put on her spectacles. But as she examined the watches, while the girls chorused, and Ethan walked about, hands in pockets, looking at the browned engravings, the old woman grew grave.